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The 4 I’s of Storytelling is a framework Latitude created by analyzing themes present in the next-gen storytelling concepts imagined by Phase 1 study participants. It represents not only a desire to delve deeper into stories, but also to bring stories out of the screen—both literally and figuratively—to mingle with our actual lives.

Immersion

set in a real world – clear social, cultural identifiers

Interactivity

social media to engage with text (participation)

Integration

central narrative across multiple platforms

Impact

gets the user to do something (make a purchase, change ideologies) It influences lives

George Ritzer

Globalisation

The rapidly increasing worldwide integration and interdependence of societies and cultures. A worldwide diffusion of practices, relations, and forms of social organization and the growth of global consciousness.

• The beginning of global communication through different media like television and the Internet

• The formation of a "global consciousness”

Grobalization

"imperialistic ambitions of nations, corporations, organizations, and the like and their desire, indeed need, to impose themselves on various geographic areas”.

It involves three motor forces: capitalism, McDonaldization, and Americanization. Grobalization creates a world where:Things are more homogenous and ubiquitous.Larger forces overwhelm the power of people to adapt and innovate in ways that preserve their autonomy.Social processes are coercive, determining the nature of local communities, which have little room to maneuver.Consumer goods and the media are key forces that largely dictate the nature of the self and the groups a person joins.

McDonalization

when a culture adopts the characteristics of a fast-food restaurant. McDonaldization can be summarized as the way in which "the principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more sectors of American society as well as of the rest of the world.

Ritzer highlighted four primary components of McDonaldization

• Efficiency

the optimal method for accomplishing a task. In this context

• Calculability

objective should be quantifiable (e.g., sales) rather than subjective (e.g., taste).

• Predictability

No matter where a person goes, they will receive the same service and receive the same product every time

• Control

standardized and uniform employees, replacement of human by non-human technologies

With these four principles of the fast food industry, a strategy which is rational within a narrow scope can lead to outcomes that are harmful or irrational. As these processes spread to other parts of society, modern society’s new social and cultural characteristics are created. For example, as McDonald’s enters a country and consumer patterns are unified, cultural hybridization occurs.

Global Village

McLuhan described how the globe has been contracted into a village by electric technology and the instantaneous movement of information from every quarter to every point at the same time.

What is it?

• The world considered as a single community linked by telecommunications

• On the Internet, physical distance is even less of a hindrance to the real-time communicative activities of people, and therefore social spheres are greatly expanded by the openness of the web and the ease at which people can search for online communities and interact with others who share the same interests and concerns. Therefore, this technology fosters the idea of a conglomerate yet unified global community.

• Global Village ensures maximal disagreement on all points because it creates more discontinuity and division and diversity under the increase of the village conditions.

• McLuhan did not foresee the Global Village as a tool for uniformity and tranquillity

Douglas Rushkoff - Present Shock (2013) Broken Narratives

Broken Narrative

How does technology change narrative?

• We can now scoot away to another channel without having to get up, turn a dial and adjust the rabbit ears. DVRs liberate us even more profoundly from the narrative trance.

• We can pause, go back and forward. The storyteller no longer calls all the shots.

• We can now scoot away to another channel without having to get up, turn a dial and adjust the rabbit ears. DVRs liberate us even more profoundly from the narrative trance. We can pause, go back and forward. The storyteller no longer calls all the shots.

Video game differences

• Video games are more consonant with the digital experience. Instead of being conveyed through a story by a narrator (as in a book), the player directs his or her own experience through a world. In a massively networked game, like World of Warcraft, there's no beginning, middle or end. Players don't play to "win" -- there's no such thing. They play for the pure fun of it. The object of the game is to keep the game going.

• Even books have taken on this quality of game culture, where fans of a certain series go to websites where they write their own "fan fiction" and add on to the universe of the original books. This, too, is more like a video game or a "fantasy role playing" game than it is like traditional narrative fiction. The original narrative may get broken, but everyone participates in a new kind of story.

A narrative is really just the story we use to understand something. It's a pathway through time: this happened, then this happened, and then . . . It's a great way to convey meaning and values

working together in teams, formal and informal, to complete tasks and develop new knowledge (such as through Wikipedia, alternative reality gaming, spoiling).

• Circulations

Shaping the flow of media (such as podcasting, blogging)

Neil Postman (1992)

Technopoly

The main argument this book explores is not between humanists and scientists, but between technology and everybody else. Most people believe that technology is a friend. It is a friend that asks for trust and obedience, which most give because its gifts are bountiful. The dark side it that it creates a culture without moral foundation, undermines certain mental processes and social relations that make human life worth living. Technology is both a friend and enemy.

• A "Technopoly" (a word Postman capitalizes throughout the book) is a society that believes that "the primary, if not the only, goal of human labor and thought is efficiency, that technical calculation is in all respects superior to human judgment ... and that the affairs of citizens are best guided and conducted by experts."

• Postman describes the rise of new "control systems" to manage information, such as statistics, opinion polls, SAT and IQ tests, etc. These are predicated on the fallacy that information can be scientifically measured and stored, he says. The result is that we believe our IQ "score IS our intelligence ... that the results of opinion polls ARE what people believe ... as if our beliefs can be encapsulated in such sentences as 'I approve' and 'I disapprove.'" What we often fail to recognize is that using statistics in polling changes the very nature of public opinion, he argues. "That an opinion is conceived of as a measurable thing falsifies the process by which people, in fact, do their opinioning; and how people do their opinioning goes to the heart of the meaning of a democratic society."

Marshall McLuhan (1964)

The Extensions of Man

‘The medium is the message’ – McLuhan foresaw a world in which technology would cause a crisis and become in essence ‘the extension of man’.

Technology and therefore mass media has allowed for ‘global events’

McLuhan’s theory has certainly not been neglected or forgotten. On the contrary, it has been widely studied in a number of circles and applied to television, print and the Internet alike. While many people seem to grasp the general point, the deeper truth is often missed or misinterpreted. In order to get to this deeper meaning, exploring the general concept first may be necessary.

• McLuhan proposes that a medium itself, not the content it carries, should be the focus of study. He said that a medium affects the society in which it plays a role not only by the content delivered over the medium, but also by the characteristics of the medium itself.

• McLuhan argued that modern electronic communications (including radio, television, films, and computers) would have far-reaching sociological, aesthetic, and philosophical consequences, to the point of actually altering the ways in which we experience the world.

What does this mean?

• Imagine a deep well in the middle of a vast desert. The well is our medium (as the radio or Web would be), and the water is our message. A rich and reliable well in the middle of the desert would naturally become the hub of travel routes and even a sustainable population. The water by itself is of no use without the well. If it were inaccessible or people were unaware of its existence, it could not support life. The well, as a medium, delivers water to the people passing by or living nearby. As a result, the well becomes synonymous with water and life, despite really being just a hole in the ground.

Modern (technology example)

• Let’s compare a feature film to a website as we know them today. Communicating the same general content to the user in both media is possible. However, because the media are inherently different, we experience the content in entirely different ways.

• A film is a linear experience. Everyone watching the film participates in the same preset series of a beginning, middle and end. We watch characters and stories unfold over the timeline, working towards a conclusion. Since the creation of film, this idea has been integral to the planning and development phases. All of this is determined by the medium, regardless of what the message may be.

• Move the same content over to a website and the experience changes dramatically. In the context of a website, information is rarely passed to the user as a linear experience. Instead, character traits, back story and plot points might all be split up into different pages or sections. It is up to the user to decide how to consume the information and reach a conclusion. Just as a beginning, middle and end are a part of the entire film process, this segmentation and fluidity should be a part of the planning stages of a Web project.